The Pink Flamingo has little use for Charles & David Koch. I don’t like people who use and abuse what they have to try and unduly influence others. There is nothing wrong with spending money on politics, donating to candidates, and doing what you can to win. That’s politics. It is what I love about politics, the opportunity to do something to effect change.

That’s the good part of it. The bad part is when someone is worth billions of dollars and has no morality about how they use it. Once upon a time men like the Brother’s Koch were the stuff of James Bond villains, out to conquer the world. Now, though this is becoming a reality, day in and day out. It is though freedom and democracy were under siege.

Rumor has it that David and Charles Koch are shopping for a major publication. The Pink Flamingo is hearing that it is more than a rumor. One of the comments, after the article is the fact that good, maybe there would be more balanced news if they controlled the situation.

“…L.A. Weekly reported this morning that the Koch brothers are “considering an offer on either the Tribune Co. newspaper group, which includes the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun or the entire Tribune Co., which includes more than 20 stations like WGN and KTLA Channel 5.”…”

Paul Ryan’s “new” budget is basically nothing but warmed over Koch. It reflects their desire not to pay taxes. It is a laudable goal, but one that doesn’t quite sync with reality, and fiscal viability.

“...Ryan’s plan would reduce both top income and corporate tax rates to 25 percent, resulting in trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. The government would lose roughly $7 trillion in revenues compared to Ryan’s projections, and while he plans to close loopholes to pay for the cuts, he has in the past failed to specify which loopholes he would close, and raising enough revenue from the elimination of tax expenditures would prove politically difficult, if not impossible. Ryan would also convert the corporate tax code to an “international” plan, resulting in an even bigger giveaway to American companies that are already paying historically low tax rates….”

When do we get to call Charles and David Koch anti-American for their efforts to basically destroy anyone who is not of banking equal? The Pink Flamingo never thought I would be quoting Norm Chomsky.

“...This common theme from 150 years ago is inhuman and savage. It also meets with resistance. And there have been victories. There were many in the struggles of the 1930s, carried further in the 1960s. But systems of power never walk away politely. They prepare a new assault. This has in fact been happening since the early 1970s, based on major changes in the design of the economic system.

Two crucial changes were financialization, with a huge explosion of speculative financial flows, and deindustrialization. Production didn’t cease. It just began to be offshored anywhere where you could get terrible working conditions and no environmental constraints, with huge profits for the Masters. Within the US, that set off a vicious cycle, leading to sharp concentration of wealth, which translates at once to concentration of political power, increasingly in the financial sector. That in turn leads to legislation that carries the vicious cycle forward, including sharp tax reduction for the rich and deregulation, with repeated financial crises from the ‘80s, each worse than the last. The current one is so far the worst of all. And others are likely in what a director of the Bank of England calls a “doom loop.”

There are solutions, but they do not fit the needs of the Masters, for whom the crises are no problem. They are bailed out by the Nanny State. Today corporate profits are breaking new records and the financial managers who created the current crisis are enjoying huge bonuses. Meanwhile, for the large majority, wages and income have practically stagnated in the last 30-odd years. By today, it has reached the point that 400 individuals have more wealth than the bottom 180 million Americans….”

News Corpse

You know how evil Barack Obama, socialist is? How he’s going to destroy the country and ruin private business forcing big multi-national corporations into becoming socialist entities of his Marxist delusions? Well… if that is true, why is it that his economic recovery has brought corporate profits to a new all time high?

“...Republicans oppose any means of full recovery in the labor market, and instead actively sought to kill jobs in their rampage to starve the government of revenue. They have not, however, starved corporations and the wealthy of a lion’s share of the wealth and they will continue protecting the rich when funding for the government runs out at the end of the month. Republicans categorically stated any attempt to raise taxes, or close loopholes affecting the wealthiest Americans, will fall on deaf ears and there is little doubt they will hold funding in March, and the debt limit in May, hostage for more austerity and no revenue with confidence the President will not shoot the hostage….”

Got an answer for that one?

Politicus USA

I guess that’s the reason corporations refuse to raise wages and give incentives to their already hard-working employees, and why the GOP doesn’t think they should be taxed.

According to some sources, corporate profits are so high they are eating the economy. Workers are being paid at a 20 year low. There is nothing wrong with a corporation making an outlandish profit, if they pay their 35% taxes without loopholes. There’s nothing wrong with outlandish profits if The Pink Flamingo is making them! There is nothing wrong with outlandish profits if a corporation is paying their workers a living wage, good benefits, and treating them like viable and valuable humans and not serf labor.

“...Corporations rack up historic profits thanks to strong global demand, cheap global labor, and low interest rates, while American workers muddle along, their significance to these companies greatly diminished by a worldwide market for goods and people. A growing economy and lower unemployment should eventually give U.S. workers a long-deserved raise (and so should rising labor costs overseas that persuade more companies to hire domestically). But improvements in technology and the ability of companies to hire locally as they chase worldwide demand are just two factors that should restrain any optimism we can keep corporate profits from gobbling up more and more of the economy. Workers still need help — and they certainly won’t find it in the sequester….”

PrairieWeather

Wages haven’t kept up with inflation. And, that’s just the way the Kochs like it!

“...The vast distance between corporate profits and declining working class fortunes may look especially pronounced now, but it’s not a deviation from longstanding trends. According to an April 2012 study from the Economic Policy Institute, hourly worker compensation stopped rising with productivity gains right around the mid-1970s. Since then, wages have stagnated even as economic productivity has continued a steady, multi-decade climb. Had the federal minimum wage kept up with productivity since the 1960s, it would be $21.72 per hour instead of just $7.25.

Just how lopsided the recovery has been becomes even more obvious when you look at household income. As Timothy Noah wrote in The New Republic, “When you look at the economic recovery’s first two years, the top one percent …. captured 121 percent of all pre-tax income gains.”

What small income gains the middle and lower-class made during that time seem to have stopped months ago. Noah again: “Since May, there’s been no statistically significant increase in median income. For the typical American worker, then, recovery from the 2007-2009 recession began in the fall of 2011 and was over that following spring. Hope you liked it!”…”

In the very strange world inhabited by the Koch Brothers and their associates like Sheldon Adelson it doesn’t matter if one breaks the law. They are so rich, no one is going to bother prosecuting them. The now dishonest GOP doesn’t even care if he is a criminal.

“...It has long been a Libertarian goal to eliminate government rules, regulations, and taxation to give free rein to corporatists’ unrestrained “free capitalism,” and unbeknownst to so-called patriots in the tea party movement, the only thing standing between abject corporate plutocracy and their economic freedom is the government they long to destroy. However, the reason eliminating government is propagated by corporatists like the Kochs and anti-government advocate Grover Norquist is their religious belief they should be immune to taxation, or requirements to follow regulations in their drive to seize power and America’s wealth. In lieu of any real threat to freedom, economic or personal, conservatives and their Republican cohort invented a spending, taxation, and deficit crisis to take advantage of racist opposition to President Obama, and despite the shrinking deficit, historically low spending, and low tax rates, Republicans convinced teabaggers that to save America, government must go.

The deficit is shrinking, and regardless if it was growing, it doesn’t hamper business, or job creation, or affect day to day Americans’ lives or their economic freedom. However, in their drive to cut spending to shrink government teabaggers support killing jobs that does affect every American with loss of services as well as revenue that starves government which is men like the Koch brothers’ goal because less government means fewer regulations and more opportunities to step in and privatize government services like education for a profit. The billionaire Kochs are joined in their drive to starve and privatize the government by the Republican Party, and billionaire corporate CEOs and their campaign to “Fix the Debt” with their message that America faces an existential debt crisis that must be solved immediately regardless their profits are unaffected by the nation’s debt or spending….”

Public Integrity

“...The sequester is a ten year plan that cuts $1.2 trillion across the board, and because they began in March, $85 billion is about 70% of the next nine years of cuts coming in at about $123.88 billion every year. It spells the end of recovery because experts estimate that by the end of 2013, $85 billion in cuts means nearly a million jobs will vanish, and GDP will fall between .7% and 1.7% in the first year alone. Kochs, AFP, teabaggers, and Republicans are celebrating austerity that deliberately tanks the economy, creates massive poverty, and all to avoid closing tax loopholes for the richest people in America. Republicans claimed 2013 sequester cuts would devastate the economy, and yet they are celebrating nine more years of 30% higher cuts, and are a reminder of the damage Willard Romney would have imposed. Romney took time to weigh in on the sequester and accuse the President of campaigning instead of working with Republicans to avert the cuts they were destined to enact….”

Politicus USA

The Pink Flamingo has not gone this far, yet…

“...It is impossible to find any socially redeeming value in the Koch brothers’ existence, and the damage they wreaked on this nation and its people is immeasurable. They were the driving force behind the Citizens United decision, spend millions promoting climate change denial, celebrated and congratulated Republicans for enacting sequestration cuts, fund the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and fund anti-union efforts in all fifty states. They are connected to every anti-American and anti-democracy effort in the nation, and are hell-bent on controlling and profiting from every aspect of American society whether it is education or politics, and by any measure are evil incarnate. That they actively deny poor Americans basic healthcare, although despicable, is just another aspect of their malicious existence….”

They have not hesitated to work with our enemies – that’s sorta’ like treason?

“…The Koch Brothers are criminal scumbags. The Koch Brothers needs to be brought down and put in jail where they belong. They should be sharing a prison cell with their friend and fellow scumbag, Rupert Murdoch. These people need to be imprisoned before they do any more damage.

Now, it is coming to light that the Koch Brothers have not only behaved in an unethical manner, but also in an illegal manner. The Koch Brothers have committed criminal acts of pollution and other environmental abuses. They have stolen oil and made illegal sales to Iran. They have been involved in bribery and tax evasion. How many more crimes will the Koch Brothers commit before justice intervenes? They need to be held accountable for their crimes.

Anyone else would have been jailed already, but different rules apply to Charles and David Koch. The Kochs haven’t covered their asses very well with the whole Iranian scandal.

These aren’t small crimes either. The Koch Brothers have done business with terrorists. They’ve provided terrorists with weapons to kill our American soldiers. It doesn’t get much worse than that. They violated the United States trade embargo and committed many illegal acts to increase their personal wealth. They should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity along with Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. Profiting from doing business with our enemies and stealing from our citizens? Why is America allowing this to continue?

The Koch Brothers motto: Good for me, screw everyone else! The Koch Brothers are parasites; they are the warts on the rear end of humanity. The Koch Brothers can buy anything they want – don’t let them buy America too!

The Koch Brothers need to come out of the shadows and show Americans who they really are. They are monsters. They are greedy idiots who would stop at nothing to get what they want. They are social Darwinists who would love to see the poor, disabled and elderly die….”

“….Charles and David Koch, the secretive billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, the largest private oil company in America, have spent millions bankrolling free-market think tanks and pro-business politicians in order, as David Koch has put it, “to minimize the role of government, to maximize the role of private economy and to maximize personal freedoms.” But a closer look at their dealings reveals that for the past 35 years the brothers have never shied away from using government subsidies to maximize their own profits, even while endeavoring to limit government spending on anything else. Simply put: the Kochs have no problem with socialism — as long as they’re in on the action.

In 1977, Charles Koch founded the Cato Institute, an influential libertarian think tank, with the aim of injecting free-market ideas into the mainstream. The Kochs would go on to establish and fund a vast network of overlapping think tanks, institutes, foundations, media outlets, and lobby groups that would vilify centralized government and promote laissez-faire capitalism as the only route to economic prosperity. The Mercatus Center, Americans for Prosperity, Reason Magazine, the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation are just a few of the right-wing organizations that run on Koch cash today.

Koch Industries is America’s second-largest private corporation, with revenue of $100 billion in 2009, and 80,000 employees in 60 countries. According to Charles Koch, Koch Industries has grown 2,000-fold since he took over from his dad in 1967, transforming a middling oil transportation and refinement operation into a corporate mini-state involved in oil, petrochemicals, paper, agriculture and financial services. Worth just under $20 billion apiece, the brothers live like emperors. David Koch, 70, resides in a Park Avenue and likes to take a few weeks off every year to lounge on his 246-foot megayacht in the Mediterranean, which costs $500,000 a week to operate and has been rented out for pleasure cruises by Prince Charles.

Seventy-four-year-old Charles G. Koch, who runs the company from a compound in Wichita, Kansas, has attributed the company’s success to an unshakable belief in the power of the free-markets—a belief that he says can be traced back to an “intellectual epiphany” he experienced at a conference more than 40 years ago. There, Koch realized that free-market economics were an objective reality “as immutable as the laws that work in science,” he explained in 2006…”

Just like a James Bond villain, they are wealthy enough, through their holdings, to literally control the price of oil.

That’s the story, boys and girls.

There is nothing wrong with being work 10, 20, even 30 billion bucks. I wish I were. There’s nothing wrong with harboring delusional fantasies of being the ultimate power of life and death in the universe, rather like Ming the Merciless. The problem is when fantasy gives way to reality. These two men are wealthy enough to purchase not only Congressmen, Senators, but Presidential candidates (including Mitt Romney). Through ALEC, they control many state houses in the country. Now they want to control the media. Using the warped and perverted financial and sociological philosophies of Ayn Rand, a psychopath, they are attempting to remake this nation in Rand’s sick and perverted image, squeezing all goodness and decency out of our land.

They will probably do it too. Look at Fox News. They have some good things to offer, but so many of their programs are just plain boring. I just figured out why so many senior citizens watch Fox. It is because they have a more attractive format. It is easier on the eyes of elderly people than CNN etc. I’m sure the Kochs will figure out how to attract as many viewers as possible. Sad, but true.

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"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”--Sinclair Lewis

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SJ Reidhead (aka The Pink Flamingo) is a writer based in New Mexico. The author of two published novels, both westerns: Dust Devil and The Second Mrs. Earp and two published works of non-fictions: TRAVESTY: Frank Waters Earp Agenda Exposed and A Church for Helldorado, Endicott Peabody's 1882 Tombstone Diary. One of the leading authorities on the life of Wyatt Earp and Tombstone during the Earp years, she is currently writing a series of murder mysteries set in modern day Tombstone. The author is also working on a book about fashion in the Wild West. When complete, there will be over 2100 unpublished antique photographs dating from 1855-1910.

The author's work has appeared in Wild West, True West, Blogcritics, and The Tombstone Times. Recently the author has had to deal with a father in Stage 4 Alzheimer's Disease. This is leading to a book dealing with the frustrations of dealing with the frustrations of the disease, finance, legal, health-care, and things no one bothers telling families about it.

SJ Reidhead has been involved in Republican politics since she was 'a little kid'. During the Reagan years she was a lobbyist working with various non-profit organizations who were attempting to salvage NASA and the American space program after the disastrous Carter years. Unfortunately, because of the libertarian take-over of the GOP, and the rise of the Tea Parties, as the Republican Party becomes more and more extreme and marginalized, it is impossible to remain loyal to the GOP. The Pink Flamingoremains GOP in order to try to bring the party back to what it once was. I fear it is an impossible task.

The Pink Flamingo went on line on October 4, 2005, after the author realized "normal" Republicans were being marginalized as the extreme far right attempts to become the new normal. In November, 2012, The Pink Flamingo, for the first time ever, voted for a Democrat, Barack Obama. Normal will never again apply to the GOP.

THE PINK FLAMINGO STORY

It started out as a joke. During the seven years I worked with the girls of my parish, leading a youth group, one of the things that I stressed were manners. Part of having manners, the way I see it, is to know how to set a proper table, host a party, cater it, and clean up afterward. I was fortunate enough to have a group of very talented girls in my youth group. They learned how to plan for, and execute large church functions, very properly. During one such function I noticed there were several incredibly tacky pink flamingos sitting on the table. Knowing the girls were up to something, I said nothing. A few months later they did the same thing at a function I was hosting at my home. I said nothing. They had a birthday party for me. More pink flamingos appeared - and a joke was born.

Thanks to the girls, all of whom are now grown, I have a collection of pink flamingos. It has become an ongoing joke. When I began working on my political blog, I realized the only possibly title was The Pink Flamingo!